WIST

In anything fit to be called by the name of reading, the process itself should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves, and rise from the perusal, our mind filled with the busiest, kaleidoscopic dance of images, incapable of sleep or of continuous thought. The words, if the book be eloquent, should run thenceforward in our ears like the noise of breakers, and the story, if it be a story, repeat itself in a thousand coloured pictures to the eye.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“A Gossip on Romance,” Longman’s Magazine (Nov 1882)

Full text.

All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind. And even if death catch people, like an open pitfall, and in mid-career, laying out vast projects, and planning monstrous foundations, flushed with hope, and their mouths full of boastful language, they should be at once tripped up and silenced: is there not something brave and spirited in such a termination? and does not life go down with a better grace, foaming in full body over a precipice, than miserably straggling to an end in sandy deltas?

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“Aes Triplex” (1878)

By all means begin your folio; even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a week.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“Aes Triplex” (1878)

It is better to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste is like a miser. It is better to live and be done with it, then to die daily in the sick-room.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“Aes Triplex” (1878)

We do not go to cowards for tender dealing; there is nothing so cruel as panic; the man who has least fear for his own carcase, has most time to consider others.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“Aes Triplex” (1878)

To be over-wise is to ossify; and the scruple-monger ends by standing stock-still.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“Aes Triplex” (1878)

There is no duty we so much under-rate as the duty of being happy.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“An Apology for Idlers” (1881)
Full text.

A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a five-pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of goodwill; and their entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted. We need not care whether they could prove the forty-seventh proposition; they do a better thing than that, they practically demonstrate the great Theorem of the Liveableness of Life.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“An Apology for Idlers” (1881)

Full text.

All error, not merely verbal, is a strong way of stating that the current truth is incomplete. The follies of youth have a basis in sound reason, just as much as the embarrassing questions put by babes and sucklings. Their most antisocial acts indicate the defects of our society. When the torrent sweeps the man against a boulder, you must expect him to scream, and you need not be surprised if the scream is sometimes a theory.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“Crabbed Age and Youth” (1881)

Full text.

My body which my dungeon is,
And yet my parks and palaces.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“My Body Which My Dungeon Is,” Underwoods (1887)

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“My Shadow,” st. 1, A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885)

Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to continue to fail, in good spirits.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“Reflections and Remarks on Human Life,” sec. IV (1878)

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“Requiem,” Underwoods, Bk. 1 (1887)

You cannot run away from weakness; you must some time fight it out or perish; and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“The Amateur Immigrant” (1895)
Citations.

The friendly cow all red and white,
I love with all my heart:
She gives me cream with all her might,
To eat with apple-tart.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“The Cow,” st. 1, A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885)

A generous prayer is never presented in vain; the petition may be refused, but the petitioner is always, I believe, rewarded by some gracious visitation.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“The Merry Men” (1882)
Full text.

The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“Truth of Intercourse” (1881)

Full text.

That a man is successful who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much, who has gained the respect of the intelligent men and the love of children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who leaves the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who never lacked appreciation of earth’s beauty or failed to express it; who looked for the best in others and gave the best he had.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
(Attributed)

Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
(Attributed) (1885)

No man lives in the external truth among salts and acids, but in the warm, phantasmagoric chamber of his brain, with the painted windows and the storied wall.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Across the Plains, “The Lantern-bearers” (1892)

If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say “give them up,” for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Across the Plains, ch. 12 “A Christmas Sermon” (1892)

Here lies one who meant well, tried a little, failed much: — surely that may be his epitaph of which he need not be ashamed.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Across the Plains, ch. 12 “A Christmas Sermon” (1892)

Gentleness and cheerfulness, these come before all morality; they are the perfect duties.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Across the Plains, ch. 12 “A Christmas Sermon” (1892)

There is an idea abroad among moral people that they should make their neighbors good. One person I have to make good: myself.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Across the Plains, ch. 12 “The Christmas Sermon” (2) (1880)
Full text.

A strange temptation attends upon man: to keep his eye on pleasures, even when he will not share in them; to aim all his morals against them. This very year a lady (singular iconoclast!) proclaimed a crusade against dolls; and the racy sermon against lust is a feature of the age. I venture to call such moralists insincere. At any excess or perversion of a natural appetite, their lyre sounds of itself with relishing denunciations; but for all displays of the truly diabolic — envy, malice, the mean lie, the mean silence, the calumnious truth, the back-biter, the petty tyrant, the peevish poisoner of family life — their standard is quite different. These are wrong, they will admit, yet somehow not so wrong; there is no zeal in their assault on them, no secret element of gusto warms up the sermon; it is for things not wrong in themselves that they reserve the choicest of their indignation.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Across the Plains, ch. 12 “The Christmas Sermon” (2) (1880)
Full text.

Every man is his own doctor of divinity, in the last resort.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
An Inland Voyage (1878)

To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
An Inland Voyage, ch. 3 “The Royal Sport Nautique” (1878)
Full text.

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882)
Full text.

The price we have to pay for money is paid in liberty.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Familiar Studies of Men and Books, “Henry David Thoreau: His Characer and Opinions” (2) (1882)

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Familiar Studies of Men and Books, “Yoshida-Torajiro,” (1882)